With every start to the New Year comes the opportunity for a fresh start and new beginnings. It has become a common practice to start the new year with resolutions or goals to help them lead healthier lives. For many people, quitting smoking is one of them, especially if they are living with diabetes.
Why is Smoking so Harmful for People Living with Diabetes?
Smoking is harmful for everyone. It increases your risk for lung cancer, heart attack and stroke. Every day, 100 Canadians unfortunately die of smoking-related illnesses. People with diabetes face even greater risks from smoking, because just like high blood sugar levels, the poisonous chemicals in cigarette smoke attack blood vessels. This contributes to hardening of the arteries (also known as atherosclerosis) which impairs your blood’s ability to carry oxygen throughout your body. Together, the combination of high blood sugar and smoking dramatically increases damage to the blood vessels that feed the heart, brain, eyes, kidneys and peripheral nerves, speeding up the long-term complications of diabetes. (Source: https://www.diabetes.ca/DiabetesCanadaWebsite/media/Managing-My-Diabetes/Tools%20and%20Resources/smoking-and-diabetes.pdf?ext=.pdf)
Tips on How to Quit Smoking
- Find Your Reason to Quit: To get motivated, you need a powerful, personal reason to quit.
- Be Ready to Make a Change: Quitting smoking is hard. Quitting requires dealing with both the nicotine addiction and making significant behavioral changes – and that isn’t easy.
- Keep it Simple: If quitting smoking is your goal this year, keep it simple and make it your only goal. Set milestones for yourself to measure your progress; don’t expect to go smoke-free overnight.
- Have a Plan: Sit down and make a quit plan. Set a date for quitting and stick with it.
- Get Support from Family and Friends: Share your intentions to quit smoking with family, friends and your health care provider.
- Be Kind to Yourself: Quitting smoking is a journey and there will be setbacks along the way. When they happen, be sure to show yourself a little compassion.
- Nourish Your Body: Choose healthy habits and activities you enjoy to feel your best when quitting
- Eat Well: Food will taste better when you quit smoking. Choose regular, healthy meals and snacks like veggie sticks, popcorn, or roasted chickpeas (recipe below) for a low-calorie crunch.
- Practice Mindfulness: mindfulness means paying full attention to our thoughts and feelings. Box breathing is an example of an exercise to ease stressful feelings (instructions below).
- Get Moving: Regular exercise and movement you enjoy such as walking, chair yoga or sports release happy hormones to your brain! (hint, check out our awesome programs at https://chcnorthumberland.ca/events/)
- Get Support from Professional and Quit Tools: In partnership with The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), the Community Health Centres of Northumberland (CHCN) is pleased to offer a free smoking cessation program. Our program offers free nicotine replacement therapy (patch, gum, inhaler, lozenge) and counseling support for those who want to quit smoking. To find out more or make an appointment, please call the CHCN at (905) 885-2626 https://chcnorthumberland.ca/programs/smoking-cessation/
